Haresh Shah
Tempting Eve To Tempt Adam
It’s the early spring weekend in 1989. I get a hurried phone call either from our German editor-in-chief Andreas Odenwald or most likely at his direction, from Christian Seidel, his PR person. German edition has just published the cover and the nude pictorial of Michael Jackson’s baby sister La Toya Jackson, originated in the US, (March 1989). Her rock video Stop the Madness is just released and she is making waves in the media for having posed for Playboy. The TV channel SAT 1 has approached our German editors, telling them that they have a slot available that weekend on their super popular Saturday night talk show, Nase vorn (literary Nose up Front/ Way up Front) hosted by Frank Elstner, and they would like to offer it to Playboy if they could get La Toya Jackson to appear on the show.
We are in luck, because just recently Jack Gordon, La Toya’s husband and the manager had stopped by in my office to talk with me about just such a possibility overseas. So I get on the line and call Jack. A series of frantic phone calls ensue across Chicago, New York and Munich. They want first class passage, adjoining executive suites in a five star hotel. Limousine pick up. The usual celebrity stuff. All arranged with the lightening speed by our German team. They are picked up by Christian in his BMW 735 and brought to the hotel in Saarbrücken, from where the show is broadcasted. The live transmission is to go on air within hours when La Toya drops the bomb. She had to have a live boa constrictor to accompany her on the show!!! An eleventh hour curve ball. But nothing our Playboy team in Germany couldn’t handle. A call to the Frankfurt Zoo, and voila.
La Toya makes her dramatic entrance bursting out from behind the oversized split Playboy cover featuring her close up, holding in her hands the giant reptile snuggly stretched out under her ample bosom. She is seated across from the host Elstner at a small round café table with the bubbles in the champagne flutes rising and the Boa resting peacefully across her lap all through the interview, like a baby at its best behavior . The show goes on without a hitch. Post show, she poses with the guests, the Olympic Gold Medalist Figure Skater, Katarina Witt and the rock star Udo Lindberg and Oscar Lafontaine – the Minister President of the state of Saarland and the Playboy editor Ulrike Blass. Everyone endures the presence of her bosom buddy. But from what I heard from the German editors on Monday morning, that even so, the crew and the host were all in awe of their disquieting guest. If a bit scared, they managed a brave face and safe distance from it – just in case. The show went on the records as being one of the most watched with 19.5 million viewers. Ulrike said later that for an international celebrity such as La Toya, she didn’t put out any airs and before parting, she told her that she had really enjoyed her trip and the experience and asked politely if she might be invited again sometime in the future.
Her pictorial contained a full page shot of her with her holding the boa, his body squeezed between her legs and his head winding down and resting on her hip. She is holding him with both of her hands, her eyes closed, lips slightly parted as if having an orgasm. The caption accompanying that shot said: I love snakes. I had hoped to do a shot all covered with snakes; I was kind of disappointed there was only one.
Two and a half years later, (November 1991), she poses again for Playboy to coincide with her memoire La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family. This time around, the pictorial includes two page spread of boa constrictor, one slithering all over her body, between her legs, winding its way up to skirt her breasts and raise its head between them. Reminiscent of the famous Nastassja Kinski billboard, shot in 1981 by America’s master photographer, Richard Avedon. In another one, she is sticking out her tongue at him almost licking him on the mouth with teasingly playful expressions on her face.
That reminded me of the time some years earlier when my secretary Teresa (Velázquez), all wound-up, reported that they had brought in a couple of boa constrictors to the Playboy studio, waiting to be photographed with the Playmate Ruth Guerri (July 1983) as a part of an erotic fantasy pictorial. It was an eerie feeling to think that slithering around merely two floors above were deadly, slinking and sliding, coiling and un-coiling creatures. As it turns out, there was only one of them. But still. This is how the photography director Gary Cole remembers the shoot: Steve Wayda did the shot for a photographer’s erotic portfolio pictorial. I was in the studio and I can tell you that Ruth really got into the shoot, so much that both Steve and I were scratching our heads. I don’t think it was a coincidence that God chose a snake to tempt Eve .Upon further inquiry, Gary elaborates: There was only one snake and yes, it was boa constrictor. I kept it in my pants. (Only joking.) The snake owner brought it in a ventilated box. It had been fed just to discourage any idea it might have about taking a bite out of Ruthie. I believe the snake enjoyed the shoot as much as Ruth did. I believe Steve had similar experience with La Toya and the snake. Naked women and snakes seem to get along. I guess so. And about the snake being fed, the first time around posing with one, the question La Toya asked was: when it had been last fed? Once they told her that a couple of days earlier, so I wasn’t worried. Boas aren’t dangerous unless they’re hungry.
And then comes Britney Spears with her 2001 MTV performance of I’m A Slave 4 U with the snake, perched atop her neck and dangling form her extended arms. And considering that there are whole slew of other women and models enamored with snakes of all kinds and shapes, I can’t help but wonder – what’s it with the beautiful women stretched out naked in all their glory and frolicking with the slithering beasts that scare me even to look at and even when they are doing their swarming and swishing behind the safe glass walls in an aquarium. The simple answer comes from Dr. Freud himself – the phallic symbol.
But there’s got to be more to it. This is Gary’s Biblical explanation: According to Christian scripture, the forbidden apple was God’s way of testing Adam, to insure that he would be obedient to God’s commands. The snake was the incarnate devil, the ultimate symbol of evil. And he worked his magic through a woman…since we all know that women are the ultimate downfall of men. The phallic implication is too strong to ignore.
And still it nags at me. Why did God choose a snake? I mean he could have sent a cuddly rabbit or a little kitty cat, even a sad faced puppy to make Eve go gaga over it and still do her magic. Like among other things; femme fatal in India is often called Nagin – the she cobra. Within Indian mythology, when God found himself in the similar predicament, he would send down from heaven one of this top apsaras. Those celestial beauties are gorgeous, irresistibly sensual and exceptionally talented in the art of seductive dancing. And when they dance, their heads and their bodies sway in fluid and languid motion just like that of the cobra charmed by the snake charmer. Both of them in the process of mesmerize and be mesmerized. A definite downfall of the mere mortal male of the species. And guaranteed to break the deepest samadhi of even the most devout Yogi. Why go through an intermediary?
© Haresh Shah 2013
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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Next Friday, June 28, 2013
ALL ABOUT THE WILD PARTIES AT PLAYBOY
You will hate me for shattering your image of the wild parties you have seen on the TV and featured on the pages of Playboy magazine. May even begin to see some virtue in the saying: the ignorance is indeed a bliss.
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